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TexasTowelie

(111,288 posts)
Mon Jan 30, 2017, 08:46 PM Jan 2017

How The Refugee Ban Is Affecting Texas

A snapshot of two of Texas’s busiest airports (DFW and Bush Intercontinental) in the aftermath of the refugee ban.

Tarek and Osama Al Olabi walked into the arrivals hall at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport Saturday morning expecting to be reunited with their parents, who had just flown in from Dubai for a visit. The young Syrian men, who moved to the U.S. a few years ago to attend Southern Methodist University, instead spent the day pacing the crowded hall and seeking answers about whether their parents—who had traveled to the U.S. on valid B1 visitor visas—would be released from immigration detention. Their parents’ flight took off from Dubai at 2:57 in the morning, and the text of President Trump’s executive order temporarily halting immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries was released more than an hour after they were in the air. “I heard about the signing but I was not expecting this,” Tarek told me Saturday night. “I thought it applied to people who are planning to come to the U.S. You cannot give people green cards and visas and then tell them not to come.”

In Dallas, almost fifty others arriving on various international flights Saturday found themselves in the same situation, held in a series of rooms controlled by Customs and Border Protection Saturday. By late Saturday night, that number had dwindled to nine, who spent the nights on cots furnished by the airport. The ACLU estimated some 200 people had been detained at airports nationwide, though Trump spokesman Sean Spicer put that number at 109 during his appearance on ABC’s This Week Sunday morning. The rollout of the order, which bars immigrants from seven majority Muslim countries—Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Sudan and Yemen—for 90 days and blocks all refugee resettlement for 120 days, has been rocky across the country, with local immigration officials making determinations of who should be allowed to enter on a case-by-case basis. (On Sunday morning, Reince Priebus announced that it would no longer apply to green card holders, according to the New York Times.)

Throughout the day Saturday, Tarek and Osama managed to communicate infrequently with their parents, who were exhausted and confused but were sometimes able to sneak their sons a furtive text message. Though their parents’ English is poor, they weren’t provided a translator to allow them to fully communicate with the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents, who were asking them to sign expedited removal documents. Their father requested a lawyer but was not allowed one, despite the presence of a dozen or so volunteer attorneys milling about in the arrivals hall.

So the brothers walked through terminal D, where an impromptu protest in the international arrivals area grew throughout the evening on Saturday, from several dozen people around five in the evening to several hundred five hours later. The protestors in Dallas clutched signs (“This ban is only the beginning”) and chanted slogans (“No hate, no fear, refugees are welcome here”). One American Airlines crew member took off his jacket and joined the chanting crowds for a few minutes before heading home. A public school teacher from Arlington shared that she came out after hearing about the protests from a friend; she is not particularly political, she said, but came out because the ban just felt wrong. “I don’t even know any Muslims,” she said. Moved by the solidarity, Osama hoisted a sign featuring the Syrian flag and the text “#he will not divide us.”

Read more: http://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/refugee-ban-affecting-texas/
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How The Refugee Ban Is Affecting Texas (Original Post) TexasTowelie Jan 2017 OP
Not publicly but oil companies are having a shit over this. elehhhhna Jan 2017 #1
 

elehhhhna

(32,076 posts)
1. Not publicly but oil companies are having a shit over this.
Mon Jan 30, 2017, 08:54 PM
Jan 2017

Many people in geoscience and engineering are here working for US and non US companies on visas and green cards from these countries.

Exxon among them. Rex Tillersons phone and email are surely blowing up with calls.

They have as much pull as the tech cos.

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